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Friday, 3 May 2013

24 hours in Pareeee!

Originally, I’d planned a 5-day jaunt; half a work trip, half Parisian ‘me time’. I’ve wanted to live in Paris practically forever, and will, I’m sure, at some point - I love the city so deeply. I’ve been lucky enough to have been to Paris quite a lot now, and have ‘done’ various sights and museums, so my plan for part of this trip was to simply ‘be’ there; to write in cafes, pretending I was French.

Alas, these plans were not to be, as the week before I was due to leave I suffered a bout of ill health (after almost 2 months of feeling ‘run down’) and fainted for the first time in my life. The swollen, cut lip, bruised chin and concussion had me swiftly cancelling my trip, feeling very sorry for myself and desperately disappointed not to be boarding the £34.50 outbound train from London to the city where beauty reigns and everything feels like a fairy tale escape world.

Yet, as much as I resented the extortionate last-minute prices of Eurostar, I couldn’t resist zipping in and out in the end, going in at lunch time and returning the following evening on my original ticket. I had worked out that if I didn’t go, bearing in mind things already paid for, I would be down £84. If I DID go, bearing in mind things paid for and the ticket to be bought and money to be made there, I would be down £94. It was a lose/lose situation, and therefore a win/win situation; I was going to go to Paris!

And then the Eurostar website didn’t work, giving my (absolutely in no need of encouragement) bank an excuse to block my card, after 5 failed attempts at purchasing a ticket. Every single time I go abroad ANYWHERE, Barclays, in the perennial prudent manner of an overly cautious parent, blocks my card. It’s a running joke in my family that I have to use cash abroad. However, this time, I’m blaming the malfunctioning Eurostar website (Barclays merely blocked my card, gamefully, for good measure); I bought a ticket easily by phone on the morning of the journey (yesterday), having packed in the hope that a slice of Paris might be a possibility after all.

Oh, Paris. It isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind. It’s one of my favourite states of mind.

As with two previous visits to Paris, I got to work with wonderful Jeremy Howitt, who managed to arrange a coinciding visit when I mentioned to him that I'd be going (he's written a bit about the trip here if you like to read things from another perspective). This time we were joined by Jessica Taylor, a sweet, friendly model I'd not met yet but had spoken to online, for some shots Jeremy had in mind somewhat inspired by Helmut Newton. We all took it really easy, especially as I was a bit 'dazed' still, so there was no pressure.

The next day, we had lunch at a cafe often frequented by Hemingway, amongst other impressive literary and philosophical characters, and stopped at a cute chocolaterie (I, of course, had to try the 'Earl Grey Tea' chocolates, but have to say I much preferred the raspberry hearts). I'm already thinking of planning my second visit for this year, which will hopefully allow me to work with the other photographers I'd originally arranged work with, and do the 'pretending to be French' thing, but that will have to wait, probably, until I'm back from my ten-day trip to Scotland. Other trips to be finalised for June/July involve Switzerland, Holland and Germany, and possibly Iceland too.

Disdain and desire:

A 'behind the scenes' shot (while the shot is being framed)... (Paris wasn't all that warm... but luckily Jess and I had coordinating purple coats. :-))

My new red ball gown; perfect, we thought, for a red cafe scene. I love the background details in these - the reflections, the handwritten chalk menu, the chairs put away for the night...

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A print book is now available for purchase, thanks to the kindness and generosity of the artists involved! If you agree that physical prints are far better to look at than online, virtual ones, do read all about it. Each purchase includes a donation to Amnesty. Treat yourself! Thank you.

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Visitors since 13th July 2010

Bouguereau, 'Evening Mood'

Velasquez - The Rokeby Venus

J. W. Waterhouse, 'The Lady of Shalott'

Rossetti, 'Venus Verticordia'

John Grimshaw, 'Iris'

J. W. Waterhouse, 'My Sweet Rose'

Guerin, 'L'aurore et Cephale'

Botticelli, 'The Birth of Venus'

J. W. Waterhouse, 'Psyche Opening the Golden Box'

Pamela Hanson, 'Bis'

Walter De La Mare, 'The Listeners'

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,

Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

Of the forest’s ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

Above the Traveller’s head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

By the lonely Traveller’s call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

’Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

Louder, and lifted his head:—

‘Tell them I came, and no one answered,

That I kept my word,’ he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

When the plunging hoofs were gone.

Natasha Khan/Bat for Lashes, 'Horse and I'

Got woken in the night,by a mystic golden light.My head soaked in river water.I had been dressed in a coat of armor. They calleda horse out of the woodland."Take her there, through the desert shores."They sang to me, "This is yours to wear.You're the chosen one, there's no turning back now."

The smell of redwood giants.The banquet for the shadows.Horse and I, we're dancers in the dark.Came upon the headdress.It was gilded, dark and golden.The children sang.I was so afraid I took it to my head and prayed.They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."They sang to me, "This is yours to wear. You're the chosen one, there's no turning back."

Mark Doty, 'A Display of Mackerel'

They lie in parallel rows,

on ice, head to tail,

each a foot of luminosity

barred with black bands,

which divide the scales’

radiant sections

like seams of lead

in a Tiffany window.

Iridescent, watery

prismatics: think abalone,

the wildly rainbowed

mirror of a soapbubble sphere,

think sun on gasoline.

Splendor, and splendor,

and not a one in any way

distinguished from the other

—nothing about them

of individuality. Instead

they’re all exact expressions

of the one soul,

each a perfect fulfilment

of heaven’s template,

mackerel essence. As if,

after a lifetime arriving

at this enameling, the jeweler’s

made uncountable examples,

each as intricate

in its oily fabulation

as the one before

Suppose we could iridesce,

like these, and lose ourselves

entirely in the universe

of shimmer—would you want

to be yourself only,

unduplicatable, doomed

to be lost? They’d prefer,

plainly, to be flashing participants,

multitudinous. Even now

they seem to be bolting

forward, heedless of stasis.

They don’t care they’re dead

and nearly frozen,

just as, presumably,

they didn’t care that they were living:

all, all for all,

the rainbowed school

and its acres of brilliant classrooms,

in which no verb is singular,

or every one is. How happy they seem,

even on ice, to be together, selfless,

which is the price of gleaming.

Kate Clanchy, 'Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell'

This is simply to inform you:

that the thickest line in the kink of my handsmells like the feel of an old school desk,the deep carved names worn sleek with sweat;

that beneath the spray of my expensive scentmy armpits sound a bass note strongas the boom of a palm on a kettle drum;

that the wet flush of my fear is sharpas the taste of an iron pipe, midwinter,on a child's hot tongue; and that sometimes,

in a breeze, the delicate hairs on the napeof my neck, just where you might bendyour head, might hesitate and brush your lips,

hold a scent frail and precise as a fleetof tiny origami ships, just setting out to sea.